"Every vote counts!"

Last updated 11/9/2016 at 9:52am

Third party candidate votes in yesterday's election accounted for more than president-elect Donald Trump's razor-thin margins of victory within individual states previously voting Democrat (3rd party %)-- Florida (3), Michigan (5), Pennsylvania (3), and Wisconsin (5). Those states alone accounted for 75 electoral votes, and Hillary Clinton lost by 42. If there were no 3rd party "protest" votes, a reasonable argument can be made that Clinton would have easily reached or exceeded the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency, as most polls and analysts had predicted in essentially a two-way race. Recent update: Minnesota's 10 electoral votes went into the Clinton column this morning, with the two percent margin of victory less about 40,000 votes cast out of more than 2.6 million.

Shades of Election 2000 when Ralph Nader's Green Party acted as a "spoiler," siphoning votes away from Al Gore in key states and thus leaving the extremely close Florida results to determine the outcome. After weeks of delay, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision weighed in and stopped the ballot recount, resulting in George W. Bush winning Florida and the election.

The phrase "Every vote counts!" appears to have been especially applicable to Election 2016.